AS: Involved enough—I'm concerned with the food and the happiness of the guests.

SR: You're not devil-may-care about this.

AS: I think you gotta embrace it a little bit.

SR: People talk about your "puppyish appeal." But it's not puppyish.

AS: That's something I have no idea about.

SR: Nor should you.

AS: I think it's from when I first got hired at SNL and had long hair.

SR: Your hair has been on a journey.

AS: Seth Meyers (4) said it looked like my hair was trying to eat my head.

SR: It looked like a hippie mullet.

AS: When I was in high school, I was the kid in the '90s who was obsessed with the '70s. I bought a bunch of old reggae and soul-funk records. I was the kid with the record player. I was into Floyd and Zeppelin. Kids called me "Dazed and Confused." Then I cut it to how it was when I got hired on SNL. It was that length until about two years ago.

SR: The cleft has gone on a journey, too.

AS: Has it changed?

SR: It's not centered.

AS: It's not centered?

SR: I'm not trying to make you self-conscious.

AS: I've never noticed.

SR: I could be wrong, and obviously you've never had the cleft moved.

AS: I'm not a cleft mover. But the cleft move is a deft move.

SR: It worked for Kirk Douglas.

AS: Did he move his?

SR: I'm almost ashamed to bring it up, but I was shocked by the pastiness of your thighs.

AS: What?

SR: On Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You stand up from your desk and you're not wearing pants. I'm going, Wow, Samberg's got a thick pair of pasty thighs on him.

AS: Well, I played a lot of soccer growing up, so I got the thick thighs.

SR: The pilot is really good. I'm not blowing smoke here.

AS: We haven't started shooting the rest of the season yet. But the pilot was really fun. The vibe on set was loose. Andre Braugher (5) is one of the best actors you can get.

SR: He changes the temperature in the room.

AS: As soon as he walked on set, Mike Schur and Dan Goor, (6) the creators of the show, looked at each other and said, "Oh, it's going to work." He's like this rock statue, and I'm a poodle yipping in circles around him.

SR: But you can act.

AS: Mike Schur [Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer and executive producer] told me that when he saw Celeste and Jesse Forever,(7) it made him think of me for this show. He said, "I had always found things you did on SNL funny, but after I saw Celeste and Jesse I thought maybe you can act a little bit, too."

AS: I had that conversation once with Lorne Michaels. He says the thing you're known for will be in quotes in the middle of your name. He's Lorne "SNL" Michaels, and I'm Andy "Dick in a Box" Samberg. If that's how it goes down, that will be A-okay.

SR: You don't strike me as a high-expectations guy.

AS: No.

SR: You're a having-fun guy.

AS: When I got to audition for SNL, I thought that was going to be the high point of my life — that I got to just see the studio.

SR: I can understand that.

AS: What else is bigger than being on that show?

SR: Nothing if you're hoping to be funny in front of a large audience.

AS: Even in the "interim years," there's still, like, Ben Stiller and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and all these people who are among the biggest stars in the world of comedy.

SR: Charles Rocket, Tim Kazurinsky. I'm kidding.

AS: Gilbert Gottfried's there.

SR: You ever see him work?

AS: He's incredible.

SR: And I'm amazed the times I've seen him, half the people in the room were having a shitty time. What were they expecting, exactly?

AS: There's so many comics who have had these rebirths because of the roasts on Comedy Central. And he's one of them. All of a sudden everyone is thinking, Oh, right. He's incredible. And he's been doing it so long, and he hasn't blinked.

SR: You don't consider yourself a stand-up, right?

AS: I did stand-up for about seven years. I stopped as soon as I got SNL. No one ever talks about it because they want me to be the guy who did the videos.

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SR: Straight from Lonely Island to America's sweetheart.

AS: The Lonely Island — the fact that we got hired together and made the videos is the reason that we were successful on the show, but I believe I got the job because I did stand-up. I was able to go and do the audition cold and have confidence. So much of stand-up is convincing people — without anything but your energy and your body language — that you're confident and comfortable. Once they're relaxed, the jokes are funnier. That's what makes Chappelle so brilliant. He gets up there, sometimes he won't even tell jokes for long stretches of time, but you're happy to be there with him. There's no urgency.

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SR: Do you miss being a stand-up?

AS: I never did the road. I never define myself as a stand-up, because I feel like it's insulting to stand-ups who have done the road. I did stand-up on television, but it was never my lifestyle.

SR: Does making the leap to films from SNL intrude on your consciousness? You've had Hot Rod, (8) but your career is still a work in progress. There's a range of post-SNL success. Bill Murray on one end, countless other alums on the other end. Will Ferrell somewhere in the middle. Are you conscious of this kind of stuff?

AS: I used to think about it more, but look at Martin Short. I just read an article about how he's never really been the star of a hit movie. He never really had a TV show that took off in a big-ratings kind of way. But then Jiminy Glick isone of the funniest characters in comedy history.There's never been a time where I thought, Martin Short's not funny. Everyone respects him. And there's a ton of comedians like that, who didn't necessarily have the biggest thing in the world but are considered in the same category as the people who did. And a lot of people who have the biggest thing in the world, that's kind of it. You do the biggest thing in the world once, and that's it. Where do you go from there?

SR: That's not a career. It's a peak and a sharp fall.

AS: Chris Rock has talked about the moment he realized he had a career. "I'm doing this. I'm doing that. I'm trying this. Some of it's going to work, some of it's not. But the consistent thing is me." I'm at a really nice place where I feel like I'm able to work. If everything fell apart, I've done enough work where I could still do stand-up at least.

SR: I don't know if Chris Rock has found the same kind of home in movies that he's built in stand-up.

AS: Chris Rock is so good at stand-up that no matter what else he does, he'll be remembered as a stand-up first, because he's one of the best stand-ups that ever lived.

SR: It must be hard to make the transition when you've achieved that level of mastery.

AS: The most successful things I've done always happen when I'm not trying to be successful. It's always when you think, Wouldn't this be funny? Wouldn't this be fun? Wouldn't that be interesting to try? Some of the strangest digital shorts that we made for SNL ended up being things people loved. The ones we thought had all the hallmark things in a hit completely bombed. It's because people can smell it.

SR: People say that you made short films a thing on the show. But, no, right out of the gate Albert Brooks did shorts.

AS: And then Christopher Guest. And Harry Shearer. He did some of the best things that have ever aired on the show. I saw "Synchronized Swimming" (9) when I was a child and memorized it. And the Eddie Murphy thing where he pretends to be a white guy and walks around? It's one of the funniest things ever. Like there's this whole white-person secret underbelly. There's a scene with Murphy on the bus and when the last minority gets off the bus, all this music starts playing, and everyone starts drinking champagne, and a waiter comes around with hors d'oeuvres and shit. It's such a pure idea for a short film. Everything we've done with the short films on the show owes a debt to those. It's all right there.

SR: Are you aware of being famous famous?

AS: I know I am famous enough that when I go outside, I get recognized a lot. But I've shot a movie with Adam Sandler. And walked around with him. I'd say I'm like a long way from that. Me, Akiva, and Jorma (10) went to the A's stadium a couple of years ago. We got the whole celebrity sneak-in-the-back kind of treatment. We were like, "Oh this is so great. We're coming back to our hometown. They'll put us on the Jumbotron probably." They snuck us through the back and it was basically empty. And they did not put us on the Jumbotron.

SR: Why not?

AS: The Bay Area does not give a fuck.

SR: That's probably a good thing.

AS: It's good for your ego. It keeps you in check. You go home and your friends are like, "Hey, what have you been up to?" And you're like, "Well, I was on SNL." "Oh, cool. I think I heard about that."

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SR: They're not overcompen-sating?

AS: No. Berkeley's great, man. I love going home. But it's good to get out and see the other side.

SR:The other side is really important. Just for self-definition.

AS: Young people always ask you for advice and I always say to get out of your comfort zone. Leave where you're from. Get out and experience more of the world.

SR: Do those young people seem to think there's a shortcut or a trick? I'm running into a lot of that. They seem to think that somehow there's a trick.

AS: I think it's still that "10,000 hours" thing.

SR: I hate Malcolm Gladwell,but I think you're absolutely right.

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AS: Do you know the soccer player Lionel Messi? (11) He was basically born and groomed to be a winner, and it worked. LeBron, too. Serena.

SR: They didn't skip the 10,000 hours.

AS: Seth Rogen has been doing it since he was a kid. I think he's younger than me, but he's been doing it for an adult's entire life already. Eddie Murphy started doing stand-up in his teens. Sandler, too. Those guys were talented and decided early. By the time you hear about them,

they've already put in those 10,000 hours. It seems effortless, but it's all work. It's all effort.

SR: I don't think people want to hear how much work lies between them and what they want.

AS: The key is loving what you do, so it doesn't feel like work for those first 10,000.

SR: Ever Google yourself?

AS: Sometimes. When I do, it is when I'm in the midst of doing a ton of press and I want to see how it went. That's when you come across the one person who decided to write a ten-page article about how much you suck.

SR: You read comments?

AS: When I first got on SNL and I read really negative comments on me online, I went to check my IMDb page to make sure that I was still on the cast of SNL. Then I checked Ferrell's page, Jack Black's page, Sandler's page — and all of them had pages and pages of people talking about how shitty they were, and how not funny they were, and how they wish they would just go away, and all this really mean shit. And I was like, Oh, I'm on the right track.

SR: You don't seem burdened by any of your success. You remind me of Patton Oswalt.

AS: What I get from him is he's a genuine fan of the world. He's fascinated by a million things and he studies them all. And he knows how to regurgitate them in a way that is really funny. And even when he goes "negative," you don't feel like he's a negative person. You feel like there's a lot of joy inside of him.

SR:You seem just as joyful.

AS: I think there's a fairly consistent trait in comics, which is that they're all happy to be there. No matter how successful they are, you still get the sense from them that they feel lucky to be there. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who doesn't need any more money for the rest of his life. Have you seen Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee? Did you see the Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner one? I was moved to tears watching it. And not from anything sentimental. It made me so happy. Reiner invites Seinfeld to come hang out with him and Mel Brooks. And when the cameras first show up, Mel Brooks is a little aloof. Like, What is this? He's very nice to him, but I think he's still trying to figure out what it is. Seinfeld even at a point goes, "You know what this is?" And he says, "No, I don't really know what we're doing or what this is." But as the night progresses, he gets comfortable. He sees that it's something that's safe for him. And by the end of it, he's on. He's like, Oh, there's cameras! I'm getting laughs! He's not in the spotlight all the time, but he's arguably still as funny as he ever was before. By the time Seinfeld's leaving, he's doing bits in the driveway.

SR: There's something beautiful about that.

AS: It's the best. It never leaves you.

SR: God forbid it should ever leave you.

AS: Comedians who are still friends at that age and still hang out and make each other laugh? It gives me such hope.